Having grown up in the same Missionary Baptist church association in Arkansas, I can relate to Conley's upbringing. Everything he describes about the religion, from the immense guilt over every single sin to the near constant fear of hell despite accepting salvation to the daily expectation of evangelism to strangers - it's all truly taught and expected in this group of churches.

This story is strong, but unfortunately not well organized. The narrative jumps back and forth where Conley remembers seemingly random events from his childhood and college. This can make things confusing and sometimes a bit boring. The middle 50% or so of this story wasn't easy to stick with because of the flaws in the structure of the novel. This would have worked much better as a chronological narrative without flashbacks.

I've read other reviews that say that this novel isn't strong because Conley only spent 8 days in LIA. I think that dismisses how much of Conley's upbringing led him to that experience. His erasure and self-torture lasted far more than 8 days and began from infancy, 19 years before he ever walked into the ex-gay center.